David Gratzer

Physician and author

Dr. David Gratzer is a physician and author. His articles have appeared in a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Los Angeles Times, The Globe and Mail, and Maclean’s. He blogs at FrumForum.com and wrote Code Blue: Reviving Canada’s Health Care System, a national bestseller.

Star quarterbacks throw touchdowns into their 40s. Seniors populate the country club's greens -- and also the House of Commons and the Supreme Court. Retirement, once seen as a brief interlude between work and death, spans decades for some. Old age has been redefined.

As the game returns to Winnipeg, it says much about the country and its newfound prosperity. The anemic Loonie now trades near parity. The real estate market didn't collapsed and the federal government's debt-to-GDP ratio is about a third of America's.

Only you can manage your own diet and your own calorie intake. No government, no restaurant, no physician can do it for you. It's this complexity that makes personal health responsibility so important in reversing the obesity epidemic.

Walk around the inner-city of Vancouver, and the painful reality is clear. The parks are still strewn with needles; addicts are still lying on the sidewalks in drug-induced hazes; death is everywhere. I'm hoping to be proven wrong, but I suspect that in a decade, despite Insite's zealous staff working away, the problems will remain.

Over a million Ontarians lack a family doctor. While boosting funding may result in some more GP visits to people in major cities, the reality is this: the doctor shortage is pathetically real and many Ontarians -- too many Ontarians -- lack the most basic access to primary care.

As the NDP looks to reinvent itself as Quebec's party, let's pause for a moment and consider what that actually means: advocacy for La Belle Province, modest flirtation with separatist positions, and bilingual frontrunners (both Mulcair and Topp speak French). And here is what it doesn't involve: a full court effort to outflank separatists.

Canadians still aren't quite American in their girth, but our fondness for Timbits takes a toll. If Canada wants to avoid American-style obesity rates, we need to take some thoughtful steps. First, we need to emphasize physical education in our schools.

Tim Hortons is supersizing their coffee. And that's all you need to know about the Canadian economy. It speaks of prosperity at a time of unease -- a major coffee chain attempting to increase sales when the chains in other countries are laying off workers. But there are, of course, storm clouds on the horizon.